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Sun Life visits with lawmakers about state of healthcare

March 23rd, 2016

Sun Life Family Health Center was one of many healthcare centers across Arizona that were represented in Washington, D.C. this month, as they met with lawmakers and public health leaders about the state of the nation’s healthcare system.

Between meeting with decision makers at the federal and state level, health center representatives attended workshops on a variety of subjects to help improve healthcare services or operations.

Each year, healthcare centers send representatives to this annual Policy and Issues (P & I) forum, organized by the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC). It is the largest gathering of community health professionals in the nation.

The P & I Forum is an annual oppor­tu­nity for com­mu­nity health lead­ers to voice their per­spec­tives to mem­bers of Con­gress and offer con­struc­tive solu­tions to the issues at hand. Par­tic­i­pants also have the chance to hear from gov­ern­ment offi­cials, some of the nation’s lead­ing health­care experts, and their peers.

This year’s con­fer­ence came at a time when health pol­icy issues were the focus of atten­tion and debate as the nation moves into a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year, and when bud­getary issues per­co­late over health­care spend­ing.

Debate was expected to inten­sify as law­mak­ers at both the national and state lev­els seek to improve the effec­tive­ness of health­care deliv­ery, reform the Afford­able Care Act, con­strain health­care costs, and strengthen Medicare and Med­ic­aid, all while meet­ing increased demands for health ser­vices.

“Health cen­ters will continue to con­front a mine­field of chal­lenges as they con­tinue to carry for­ward their mis­sion and main­tain strong pub­lic sup­port for the Health Cen­ter Pro­gram,” said one NACHC spokesperson.